August 2025 Update
Over the summer we've been quite busy mentoring young adults, encouraging teenagers, street witnessing, volunteering, gathering donations, ministry consulting, networking, and took part in the launch of a Sunday Morning church plant!
By the Hand of God Almighty, Gabriel is now on staff at a local church in addition to leading the Isayah 61 Ministries church, and working in Real Estate. The new role has opened up new opportunities to serve God and expand the outreach potential and even add a little extra income for doing ministry in the area. That being said, Gabriel can now safely take the beginning salary need for himself off the estimated budget and thereby devote the whole initial salary fund demands to hire the Ministry Director and possibly the Assistant and an Outreach Coordinator to some level. I believe that we will shortly receive some response from the IRS about our official non-profit status. As soon as we have that, we will make application for the loan to purchase the proposed building at 4404 Lawrenceville Rd in Loganville as the outreach headquarters. More on that later.
We are eagerly seeking to "hire" an outreach coordinator volunteer as we have many new opportunities to serve. This will help to recruit new churches and volunteers on a more professional level to ensure we can begin regular community outreaches weekly. Our current prospect is having a family medical emergency so we'll address this in a few weeks.
Over the summer, I've have several opportunities to share the vision of Is61 with other pastors and ministers and leaders in our area. Most of the time, I have been unable to shortly articulate the main purpose of Is61... likely because it simply is do everything we can to reach everyone in the state of Georgia. But, that is not a truly shareable vision being so broad. So, our elder Brian L, Vice President, and even our new partner Pastor Brian P have given some constructive criticism on narrowing the field.
The eventual goal is still the same. Do the Isaiah 61 great commission plan. But, for now we are simply going to focus on sharing those things we are already doing until the team is hired and can implement the larger parts.
What are we doing? We are uniting churches and ministries to reach the community, we are mentoring many young adults and intervening in various situations, we are networking among ministries to find resources for other ministries in need or sometimes individuals, we are raising funds for those in need, we are actively participating in prayer meetings or creating opportunities for prayer meetings around the area, we are giving free church consulting for various aspects of operating churches or new ministry launches. Isayah 61 is operating a church resource sharing program which finds un-needed audio and video equipment or any other ministry related items which can be utilized by another ministry in need. Is61 has so far helped (or has 2 outstanding appointments to install) 6 churches or outreaches with tangible goods donated by 3 other churches. Additionally, we have put out feelers for specific other items to help struggling churches with needs beyond their capacity to afford. We are recruiting evangelists for street witnessing events currently also.
Obtainable Goals for the rest of 2025: Obtain the full Tax Exempt status from the IRS, move operations from Gabriel's home-office to a legitimate ministry headquarters, Hire at least 1 full time staff member, launch the Ministry Networking database and prayer network, begin hosting pastor fellowships, launch a retail discipleship and mentoring ministry, launch the retail church resource distributorship "store" (retail to the public, wholesale to ministries), and acquire 5 corporate donors.
Things are moving forward at a steady pace. As written on the home page currently, Is61 is designed to create atmospheres of worship. Gabriel is now the Minister of Music at a growing church in Lawrenceville serving under another pastor and is also booked/invited to lead worship around the area at other ministries. Gabriel is also helping to launch a worship gathering in Loganville likely starting in October or earlier. Gabriel has also helped with pop-up street witnessing worship gatherings in Monroe and 1 organized event at the Walton Center for Arts. We are just at the beginning. Gabriel is also fundraising with the help of others reselling donated hobby items and hopefully soon the Cars for Kids vehicle donation program. While the current intake of donations is small, each little thing seems to be perfectly timed to help someone or a ministry in need. A large church donated several sound systems to us only 2 days after we posted that we needed audio equipment donations for 2 churches. We started a benevolence fund for a person in need and for people we meet in the streets which is currently only sitting at around $100 so we would love some more donations. It is mostly for a meal or an emergency item for someone.
We look forward to the last section of the year! At most, the IRS has 2 months to start processing our 501c3 application and we will immediately celebrate with as many rounds of grant applications as we have lined up and several more by then! We have great work to do and it shall all come to pass. Believe it! Blessings to all who've read our update!